


redshift

by goddcoward



Series: i hate you, i love you (i hate that i love you) [8]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Angst with a Happy Ending, Double Slow Burn, Enemies to Lovers, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Illusions, M/M, MadaTobi Week 2020, Madara wins, Major Character Undeath, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Pining, Psychological Warfare, Slow Burn, Time Travel, Tsukuyomi AU, anyway, do i have prompt bingo yet, i didn't break it any more than kishimoto did so., it's not REAL babes but don't worry the emotions will feel very real :-), let's see what else, ngl i totally forgot that was one of the prompts, ok yall ready?, sort of., we have fucking sedimentary onion levels of slow burn, we have layers of slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:48:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25168714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddcoward/pseuds/goddcoward
Summary: Light a candle, cast a shadow. We are each of us alone, to be sure; what sane person could live in this world and not be crazy? What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?an amalgam of wisdom from Ursula K. Le GuinMadara is nothing more than a twisted phantom of the person he used to be, lost to the hatred that remains of his love, possessed of the most powerful dōjutsu in existence and utterly incapable of sight. The Nidaime is a pivotal figure of shinobi history, always expanding his understanding of the world at any cost but never learning.The Tsukuyomi has consumed every living human, and it plants its parasitic influence inside countless comatose minds without flaw in the case of all but one. Tobirama's consciousness is an aberration, irregular, mercurial, difficult to damage; Madara tries to break him and inadvertently changes everything.
Relationships: Senju Tobirama/Uchiha Madara
Series: i hate you, i love you (i hate that i love you) [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1288718
Comments: 12
Kudos: 97
Collections: MadaTobi Week 2020





	redshift

**Author's Note:**

> wow writing summaries is tough :-/ might have to edit this one bc it feels like bullshit.....felt like bs as i was typing it.....didnt trust these words then and i don't now.............
> 
> i think this is going to be agonizing but geniunely it is also an excuse to take characters and put them in literally any situation i want. canon who? tobirama is going to hallucinate being happy and well-adjusted and kishimoto can pry my irrational obsession with madatobi out of my cold dead hands
> 
> something about the idea of taking canon madara and canon tobirama and making them jump through hoops until they fall in love makes me suspect that this will be Long........not gonna say for sure tho bc i might curse myself 😔 
> 
> things i am working on, to give an idea of what might be updated soon: equilibrium, serendipity, blood // water, dangerous woman
> 
> also the new works for madatobi week 2020 but those r secret rn.... 🤫 
> 
> first chapter has characters who are NOT FOUNDERS (gasp!) and they were fun to write.......lov kushina and naruto tbh also sakura mokuton dyke thanks for coming to my ted talk

Ino’s hitai-ate hangs freely around Sakura's neck, slack to the point that it bounces against her clavicles when she moves, but it is nonetheless a noose, its presence suffocating.

It’s the last thing she has of her pig. Ino went to reprogram Obito’s mind while Kakashi-sensei had him distracted, she hasn’t been seen since, and the realist in Sakura’s core keeps reminding her that no one could have survived that last explosion, Kamui destroyed molecule by molecule, the backlash so intense that a single dying dimension could not contain it. She had seen the blast from two kilometers, a flare of light on the horizon, a tug in the pit of her stomach, the whisper of another consciousness that had been buried in her brain stem since childhood fading to nothingness.

It feels _wrong,_ existing without that vestige of Ino’s mind tucked into her own. She’d been practicing her first jutsu for some kind of Clan coming-of-age ritual, and teasing comments from a few older cousins had her fuming, insisting that she would be the first Yamanaka to master the mind transfer technique without being certified as a true ninja beforehand. No hitai-ate, no official rank, not even more than a year of Academy training: the perfect time for a little girl to attempt a jutsu famous for going horribly wrong if not executed perfectly.

Sakura had heard her complaining and thought something along the lines of _that seems like a terrible idea,_ so of course she agreed to be Ino’s target, partly because they were already kind of a hivemind and partly because a dumb exhibition of blind, stupid courage might attract Sasuke’s attention.

(Even then, she knew that he and Naruto were drawn to each other somehow, and even then, she was justifying the magnetic pull that would make them a trio. If she pretended that she loved Sasuke, taking her admiration and envy of his skill and heritage and dressing it up in the feelings she didn’t want to admit she had for Ino, if she pretended that she wasn’t always thinking about how Naruto goes home alone to an empty apartment on the edges of the city, how Iruka-sensei buys him ramen not because of favoritism but because he’ll go hungry without it, how he’d be so desperate for any kind of recognition that he’d do anything to get even some, and decided that her confused worry was dislike more than anything else, she wouldn’t have to admit to anything embarrassing.)

(Sasuke’s Susanoo cracks under the relentless onslaught of his ancestor’s attacks, his eyes weeping blood as he forces chakra he doesn’t have into a shield that isn’t working just so that Naruto has a fraction of a second more to finish crafting a barrier seal. Naruto is so infuriated at Madara’s incessant refusal to let Sasuke live that Kurama has to stop him from leveling the continent in his rage. Yin and Yang, and she wonders if they realize that their façade of mortal hatred is paper-thin to anyone with eyes.)

Ino had actually managed it, and it was only as she was retreating to the confines of her own head that Sakura faltered in her concentration, disrupting the flow of chakra and leaving them both stuck with a phantom whisper of the other hidden deep in folds of gray matter.

Before Obito, she had never wondered what would happen to that shadow if one of them were to die, and since Obito, she hasn’t had a moment to spare for anything but survival.

It’s a small thing, inconsequential, and it still leaves Sakura stumbling and gasping for breath, Hinata keeping her upright with bruising-gentle fingers wrapped around her bicep.

Her voice is velvet-soft, lined with solid steel, and the compassion knit into the core of her being does not keep her from sharing ruthless words Sakura needs to hear.

“Keep moving, Sakura-chan. Naruto-kun and Sasuke-kun will need our support.”

Hinata’s opalescent glare is rimmed in the labyrinthine ridges of her activated Byakugan, the brilliant spectrum of light cast by her prismatic irises shimmering iridescent on the blood dripping down her throat. Ino had always been envious of her hair, the perfect glossy midnight color; just yesterday Sakura remembers it brushing at her waist, long and sleek and shining crimson beneath the moon.

The longest strands remaining don’t clear her chin, matted and snarled and plastered against the gore drying on her cheeks. Hideous gouges circle her scalp, the circumference of her skull scored by winding furrows of mangled flesh, the majority of that soft, pretty hair ripped out at the root or trimmed for convenience.

Before they’d graduated, Hinata had always smelled like jasmine and lavender, like the incense smoke that had clung to her Hyuuga robes like fog, like expensive conditioner and imported perfume.

(Before they’d graduated, Naruto was never seen without those goggles perched on the crown of his head or paint smeared across his whiskered cheeks. He’s been brighter than the sun for as long as Sakura has known him, golden hair burning Uzumaki-red in the darkness, the incomprehensible immensity of Kurama’s chakra smothered by his toothy smile. It’s little wonder that he tamed the Kyuubi with nothing more than his heart and his terminal inability to give up. Nine tails’ worth of power is nothing in comparison to the sheer goodness saturating his person, whatever it is about him that made Nagato and the bijuu and _Uchiha fucking Sasuke_ stop and stare, whatever it is about him that seems to be fundamentally incompatible with hatred. Sakura has never seen him in public with a bare forehead, but something about that makes sense; he is anything but ordinary.)

Hinata’s grip is warm and gentle and merciless, the weight of Neji’s death sitting heavy on her shoulders. She helps Sakura stand, pausing when their twined fingers slip against the silken lock of long brown hair tied around one wrist.

There is no apology spoken aloud, but Hinata hears her anyway, turning her head so that they can pretend not to notice the tears spilling out of her moonstone eyes.

It’s called the Caged Bird Seal. Distantly, in the stony shards of her heart that haven’t calcified beyond recovery, Sakura is morbidly amused. How much of his life had Neji spent angry and bitter that his existence had no independent meaning, that his purpose in the world was to smile gracefully and die in silence? How different had he been after the chūnin exams changed everything? How had he been able to laugh, impaled by the Ten-Tails, skewered through the middle by a blow that would have killed his cousin (his _heiress)_ without his intervention?

“Keep moving, Hinata-chan. Naruto and Sasuke-kun will need our support.”

\--

The Tailed Beasts are some of the most ancient creatures to have ever walked the earth, and of the nine of them Kurama is the eldest, the first true soul the Sage pulled from the primordial immensity of what had been the Juubi. He has existed in one form or another for thousands of years, surviving indignity and imprisonment within no less than _three_ individual Uzumaki ninja, each one louder than the last. He witnessed squalling storms raise the Whirlpool Country archipelago from the savage eastern sea, and he proceeded to outlive it. He has seen countless generations pass over a period of time incomprehensibly vast to the human mind, and his chakra had already been burning for endless eons before that.

Kurama was derived from the incorporeal remains of the Ten-Tails’ life force; excluding Ōtsutsuki Hagoromo, the Juubi is the closest thing to a parent that he will ever have. Naruto’s perception of family was warped when he was orphaned in the earliest moments of infancy, but forced exposure to a _very_ unwanted lecture by his aunt Tsunade after she caught him trying to masturbate without accidentally vaporizing his apartment means that he understands the basics of mortal reproduction. The knowledge is minimal, restricted to the dusty shadows of the brat’s brain more often than not, but it’s there.

Kurama might find it amusing if he hadn’t been required to endure the enthusiastic expressions of affection that had created his third jinchuuriki in the first place.

( _So many._ The reaction of his acidic chakra with Kushina’s human coils changed her physiology in a myriad of ways; Kurama never cared about her stunted fertility until she and Minato decided to try for a baby and it became evident that conception would be difficult. At least _Mito_ was _discreet_ about intimacy with her husband. The gene in the Uzumaki bloodline that produces red hair must also be responsible for obliterating subtlety.)

The simple truth of Kurama’s reality is this: he _is_ the Juubi. He is the chakric progeny of a primitive deity, and his lineage is anchored in the existence of the only being to come before him.

When the rogue Uchiha revives the Ten-Tails from the ungodly amalgam the bijuu have become, he does not recognize it. For a moment he believes that Madara has simply split open the earth with a titanic Doton and drawn mountains from its core, great jagged cliffs of jet-black rock of such superlative size that the shadowed peaks eclipse the sky.

Naruto does not have the chance to summon his altered Rasengan before the mountain range begins to _move_ , inelegant and lethargic and unmistakably alive.

It shifts upright with the tectonic din of an avalanche, a great wall of darkness rising and coalescing, the amorphous mass of malice taking decisive form beneath red moonlight.

[…Is that…] Naruto says, the telepathic bond he shares with Kurama taut with apprehension. [It’s so _big…_ ]

Its motion is impeded by the lingering torpor of resurrection, but it doesn’t need to match their vulpine agility. Its aura alone is strong enough to choke; they can barely muster enough stamina to stay upright.

Limned by the moon in a hundred shades of blood, Kurama’s night vision struggles to determine the Ten-Tails’ actual appearance. He stares at an enormous crag coated in overlapping plates of armor without understanding its body until the sky above him starts to sob and he realizes that he’s looking in the wrong place.

Its head is _up._

[Can’t you get any _bigger?_ ] Naruto hisses, panicking like Kurama doesn’t _see_ what they’re up against. [Kitsune can shapeshift, can’t they? Now would be a good time for that!]

The Ten-Tails turns, still weeping, and as it lowers its face Kurama’s normal sense of scale is shattered. He is unfamiliar with the experience of standing tall in his true form and not dwarfing his surroundings.

The Juubi’s single red eye, set into the ridged slope of what would perhaps be something like a forehead in a normal tetrapod, is _bigger than he is._

Kurama is a bijuu, and he has no fear of death. His understanding of mortality is stained by the immaterial nature of his existence, and his decades spent within short-lived humans have not given him any real perspective.

The great jaw gapes open. Energy gathers into a sphere beneath the roof of the mouth. His hearing is swallowed by a deafening clutter of white noise, broken only by the sound of Madara’s incessant laughter; the Ten-Tails lunges, and Kurama is consumed by an oppressive inevitability in the fractured moments before the bijūdama detonates on immediate contact with his snout.

\--

Hashirama sees Madara’s smile for the first time in over a century.

_The Katon jutsu is weak, but after already claiming several consecutive victories this afternoon, Hashirama is overconfident, flickering around their makeshift sparring grounds and avoiding blows by such a narrow margin that displaced air ruffles his bangs. The Katon jutsu is weak, but Madara has already consumed a fair amount of chakra with larger, hotter fireballs that had diminished in strength with every shot, and it’s not unreasonable to assume that he won’t have enough energy for any more techniques. The Katon jutsu is weak, and the warmth of springtime sunshine saturates Hashirama’s every cell with photosynthetic vigor, and he’s not expecting to trip over his own feet in what is admittedly a ridiculous excuse for taijutsu and land in the dust in a noisy knot of tangled limbs._

_The Katon jutsu is weak, but a flame is a flame no matter its size, and Hashirama is young and gullible and naïve enough to trick himself into believing that Madara won’t take advantage of any vulnerability._

_The abrupt, unwelcome heat of bright red embers sizzling in his hair and clothes should not be surprising, but Hashirama is kind and forgiving and foolish; when the sparks begin to eat into his bangs and hakama, his reflexes are perhaps less than perfect, and in the blind panic of trying to extinguish all the bits of him that are suddenly **on fire** he is not composed enough for even the smallest of Suiton techniques._

_The explosion of icy bubbles against his bare face as he tumbles ass over head into the Nakano does not dampen the brash bark of Madara’s snorting laughter. When Hashirama returns to shore and coughs up more river water than should reasonably be able to fit in his ten-year-old lungs, Madara’s smile is radiant, bared teeth and affectionate teasing and unspoken hope in the future they could build together._

The God Tree is blinding in his peripheral awareness and the toxic smoke of carbonized flesh is impossible to ignore, but the raptorial pitch of the shrieking Madara makes when his Rinne Sharingan begins to spin on the bruised surface of the moon is overwhelming in the extreme. Hashirama can do nothing but watch as the concentric circles and rotating tomoe take shape, pale silver moonlight stained bloodier and bloodier with every passing moment until the Infinite Tsukuyomi starts to flower, until he has to force his gaze away to clear his mind of illusory fog.

Meters away, the macabre glow of the genjutsu reflects off of wet leather, the silhouette of Madara’s fist limned in glistening red where his stranglehold on Tobirama’s hair doesn’t obscure his glove.

_In the three days that have elapsed since Madara walked away from the Nakano with a new resolve strong enough to awaken his Sharingan, Hashirama has not conversed with his brother._

_That’s not to say that he’s been silent, but Tobirama was unreactive, unresponsive, a cold-blooded statue who had sat stock-still and stared at nothing. A conversation would imply a two-sided conflict instead of Hashirama just attacking him with a typhoon of hurt and hatred, unleashing every ounce of spite and resentment he’d been harboring over the years of their contentious childhood. Every difference between them was weaponized, every vulnerability targeted, all the jealousy and betrayal and neglect and revulsion and dismay laid bare in a futile attempt at catharsis._

_Hashirama had raged for hours straight, screaming his voice hoarse, crying so much he dehydrated himself, hurling all of his problems at Tobirama and only getting angrier and angrier when he received no response._

_Father has always hated that Hashirama’s understanding of family was never normal; out of all his son’s many weaknesses, that warped perception of love and loyalty is the one he fears the most. Hashirama is powerful and passionate and wholly unable to separate the two; the value of his Mokuton could not compensate for his refusal to respect his obligation to the Senju above his own heart._

**_Don’t poison your brother with sentiment. Stop trying to ruin Tobirama because he is everything you are not. Stay away from him, brat – he is to be our salvation and you forget too easily that the only reason you’re still breathing is your Wood Release. If you were dispensable, Hashirama, and every day it is my deepest regret that you aren’t, Tobirama would have replaced you by now._ **

_Hashirama loves his brothers with everything he is. That’s a fact, irrefutable, as much a cornerstone of his existence as anything has ever been, and Tobirama won’t believe that anymore, not after all of the calculated cruelty he has endured, calculated cruelty that had come from his anija. Their family is dutiful, not affectionate, but for as long as Hashirama can remember, he and Tobirama have – had – been an exception, bound as much by their trust in each other as their shared blood._

The Juubi is too powerful to be contained within the fragile vessel of a human body. As Madara stalks down his assembled row of Kage, the toxic black sludge polluting his veins is visibly expanding, throbbing and spreading to spiderweb across his face. Hashirama does not fail to notice that the pattern is almost a perfect match to the cracks sprawling across the undead skin of Edo Tensei.

Madara-the-jinchuuriki – Hashirama refuses to believe that the man before him is the same little boy who couldn’t skip a stone – is clinical during the process of individually seeding the Tsukuyomi inside the minds of the handful of people he considered _problematic._ Sarutobi, after confessing to orchestrating the genocide of the Clan that had been Madara’s entire life, was not treated with any more animosity than Uchiha Sasuke, the sole survivor of that genocide. They collapse with identical bonelessness after the impersonal brush of gloved fingertips against their foreheads, all of the emotional tension Madara-the-jinchuuriki would have carried for them erased along with their consciousness. Hashirama isn’t expecting to be special, not after watching that, and he can try to believe that his position as the last of the ninja Madara-the-jinchuuriki needs to nullify is a simple coincidence until they are staring at each other as the only two humans still alive.

A lifetime of conditioning is not so easily ignored, and he doesn’t meet Madara-the-jinchuuriki’s gaze until he’s forced to make eye contact.

He doesn’t _look_ like a lunatic. The madman wearing Madara’s face just appears to be Madara; Hashirama notes the minutia of his expression and sighs at the sight of unrelenting conviction. It might have been better if there was a chance he could pretend that Madara-the-jinchuuriki is just insane.

Madara-the-jinchuuriki blinks, Rinnegan melting into nothingness until his eyes are recognizable, all deep obsidian irises and shadows smeared beneath his lower lashes, and suddenly it’s so much _harder_ to face him with the same eyes Hashirama trusted with his life—

(Eyes he still trusts, even though he knows that he shouldn’t, that he isn’t so blind as to oversee the metamorphosis that consumed Madara and spat out Madara-the-jinchuuriki. Tobirama used to scowl and call him a hopeless optimist; Hashirama wonders if he’d be happy to be right, after all this time.)

“The only way, Hashirama,” Madara-the-jinchuuriki murmurs, voice warped beyond recognition. “This – _this_ – is peace, unviolated by the corruption that ruined Konohagakure. Whatever you may believe, I do care about you, so I’ll ensure that it goes right this time. This is what you _wanted.”_

He drops into oblivion with those words ringing in his skull.

**Author's Note:**

> 😤 😤 😤 
> 
> i'm a thirsty bitch for feedback as always yall know i live off of comments but also a question for the readers: i might change my name to sloane. good vibes? rancid vibes? definitely not at all related in any way to the raven from taz. absolutely not
> 
> comments n kudos keep me writing as u may know.........it's a lot easier to make new content if i know that people like it and want to see more of it


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